Downtown Hartford

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT DOWNTOWN HARTFORD - PAGE 4

Though she gained a national reputation as a housing innovator in New York, West Hartford native Rosanne Haggerty wanted to do a project in Hartford. She is poised to score a hat trick. Ms. Haggerty's nonprofit, Common Ground, executed a lovely renovation of stately 410 Asylum St. into mixed-income housing. It opened with 70 apartments in 2009 and is fully occupied. She initiated another nonprofit, Northeast Neighborhood Partners, that has begun the renovation of the former M Swift & Sons gold-leafing factory in the North End into a mixed-use development.

They froze on Tuesday night, but were back to play again on Thursday. Not much holds back this group. From First Night to First Thursday, they're there. This is Business for Downtown Hartford, a grass-roots organization of people who work in the city, and have a stake in its economic health. On Thursday, the group gathered at Black-Eyed Sally's BBQ and Blues downtown for a party. Folks talked business -- good -- over fried catfish -- mmm, so good. New chef Bernie Gorski, formerly of Peppercorn's, was doing his Bayou best at the grill.

By TOM PULEO And KENNETH R. GOSSELIN; Courant Staff Writers Tom Puleo can be reached at 860-241-6604 or by email at puleo@courant.com; Kenneth Gosselin at 860-241-6765 or gosselin@courant.com., June 26, 2002

While Adriaen's Landing proceeds with much fanfare on the Connecticut River, a reclusive Miami Beach-based developer has quietly assembled his own tract of prime land in the Bushnell Park-Union Station area, dominating the western gateway to downtown Hartford. Since 1996, Robert A. Danial's Morgan Reed Group has spent almost $30 million to acquire 19 parcels citywide; on Tuesday, it took management control of one more. All but a handful are in the Union Station area, where Danial now owns the former Bond Hotel, the old Ramada Inn and several apartment buildings, office buildings and parking lots.

A downtown Hartford bustling with more than 5,000 students, drawn to a unique campus shared by a consortium of universities, is a vision being pursued by a partnership of local academic leaders. Capital Community-Technical College hopes to merge its two Hartford locations into a single downtown campus, creating a center of higher education that could serve as the anchor for programs offered by the University of Connecticut, the University of Hartford, St. Joseph College, Charter Oak College and possibly other schools.

Bless Howard Baldwin. He's a dreamer with his feet on the ground. He wants to do something good for Hartford. And by putting a plan on the table, he's forcing us to face this question: Do we want to cement Hartford's position as the entertainment center of central Connecticut, or not? For many good reasons, the answer should be a resounding yes. Mr. Baldwin, the revenant hockey impresario who brought the National Hockey League's Whalers to Connecticut in the 1970s and then returned to own the AHL Connecticut Whale, unveiled a proposal last week for a $105 million renovation of Hartford's XL Center.

It's a great time to be a planner in Hartford. Since December, when a local partnership bought the former Main Street Market site with plans to develop it, a crop of downtown development proposals suddenly has sprung up. Gov. John G. Rowland scattered more seeds when he announced last week that he wants the state to invest a record $350 million over the next six to 10 years in Hartford's development. The money would be spent on "six pillars" of development -- a convention center and sports "megaplex," parking, housing demolition and construction, a university campus, the riverfront, and revitalization of the Hartford Civic Center mall.

Rebecca Taber-Conover says it happens all the time: As she leads a tour down Hartford's Main Street, people are bowled over by its history and architecture -- once it is brought to their attention. "A lot of folks -- and I was this way, too -- you drive down the street to pick somebody up at Travelers, and you don't see the great architectural details that are there," she says. Everyone has experienced this: seeing without really seeing. Conover is among the leaders of the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society's "Discovering Hartford's Main Street" walking tours, the next of which will be May 6. "Going by foot is a nice way to do it, especially as we hit the warmer months," she says.

Physics says that the greater an object's mass, the greater its gravitational pull. The Hartford Downtown Council hopes the same principle will attract suburban and city neighborhood residents to Hartford this summer. The downtown council and a 50-member coalition of art, business and municipal groups plan to turn certain Hartford weekends into events themselves this summer. The strategy is to promote a diverse menu of events -- a "Hartford Mega-Weekend" -- and publicize the "massive" range of offerings as a way to attract people to the city.

For the past two years, Michael Cannon had been a spectator at the annual Thomas Hooker Day Parade, a light-hearted march past the Gold Building and other downtown landmarks. The parade, with its marchers and riders paying tongue-in-cheek tribute to Hartford's founder, included cows, jesters, Indians and Coneheads. This year, Cannon abandoned the sidewalk for the street to demonstrate some enthusiam for his home city. Dangling from his neck was a sign that read: "Left-enders for peace, justice and naps."

That the opening of the St. Joseph College School of Pharmacy was pushed back a year makes it all the more welcome. It's just what downtown Hartford needs. The school was going to open this year, but officials of the West Hartford college decided to take more time to develop the curriculum. The delay fueled speculation that the deal was off. Not so. At the risk of dousing the city's general spirit of pessimism, the school is well into a $4.4 million investment that will transform 35,000 square feet of office space in the Hartford 21 complex into the pharmacy school.